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It happened again the other day: In conversation with a salesperson, she said the best time to contact prospects is before & after hours, and during lunch hour, when they tend to be alone in the office.

Yawn….

I had to hold myself back from calling her an idiot.

You see, the only business owners inefficient and disorganized enough to be in the office during all those odd hours probably can’t pay their bills, nor do they have the means to buy from you.

The smart ones are letting their employees run the show during those hours – if anyone is in at all – or they’re at networking & master mind groups with other business owners.

But it was the idea of calling at lunchtime that really blew my mind, because I’d recently witnessed just that – at a restaurant, of all places!

The Infamous Lunchtime Cold Call

I was sitting in a casual restaurant, near the kitchen, when the phone rang and the owner answered. Sure enough, it was an idiot making a cold call. (Really, who is dumb enough to cold call a freaking RESTAURANT at lunchtime???)

The owner, who isn’t overly friendly to begin with, answered the phone. “No we do not have a website,” I heard him say. “No, we don’t want a website!” I heard him yell. Finally he slammed the phone down and hung up on the annoying cold caller.

(FYI: This place is already hugely popular and is constantly packed, hence why the owner doesn’t want a website to make it even more over-capacity.)

What Went Wrong?

Why didn’t this restaurant owner want to meet with the cold-calling web designer? What made him slam the phone down in anger, when the cold-caller refused to take “no” for an answer?

That’s simple: He wasn’t a qualified prospect!

And therein lies one of the two biggest problems with cold calling: It simply fails to find enough qualified prospects to keep you fat and happy. (The other major problem is that it’s an unacceptably huge time drain, but that’s a topic for another email.)

The study done by Baylor University I recently told you about concluded that it takes an experienced salesperson 7.5 hours to get one qualified appointment. A lot of people balked at that and emailed back, “I get way more than one appointment in that much time!” But they’re missing the key point: The study only considers a qualified appointment with someone who is ready, willing, and able to buy – now.

And cold calling simply doesn’t find enough of them to make it worth your while.

So do yourself a big favor: STOP cold calling, and START using effective, intelligent, Information Age methods to start bringing qualified prospects to YOU!

About Frank Rumbauskas

Frank J. Rumbauskas Jr., the New York Times best-selling author who redefined selling and who continues to teach salespeople how to generate endless leads without cold calling, chasing, or begging, now uses the science of social dynamics to unleash unstoppable people and organizations.Frank learned… more